Royal Pard
by Lomonaaeren
Summary: HPDM preslash. Spying on suspicious wizards in Animagus form is nothing new for Harry. How was he supposed to know that spying on the Malfoys would be different? COMPLETE.


**Title: **Royal Pard

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco, past Draco/Astoria

**Warnings: **Angst, brief violence, partial epilogue compliance (Draco was married, Harry wasn't)

**Rating: **R

**Wordcount:** 9000

**Summary: **Spying on suspicious people in Animagus form is nothing new for Harry. How was he supposed to know that spying on Draco and Scorpius Malfoy was going to be different?

**Author's Notes: **The first of my Advent fics this year, for enamoril, who gave me the following prompt: _Harry Potter is a master of Transfiguration and works as an Auror for the Ministry, but rather then do obvious field work he is employed as a spy, sent into suspicious homes in the guise of an animal. Newly divorced Draco buys him (as a Kneazle or whatever) as a secret Christmas present for his son, and Harry finds out all of the dirty secrets... including some that keep him from wanting to turn him in, as well as Draco's ongoing obsession with Harry._ You may notice that I'm posting this rather early for Advent itself; that's because I have a lot of prompts this year.

"Pard" is an archaic term for leopard.

**Royal Pard**

"And his activities are really suspicious enough to warrant an intervention like this?" Harry couldn't keep the doubt out of his voice.

Kingsley grinned at him and tapped his fingers on the desk. "_This _is a change of tune, Harry. You've never hesitated to investigate Malfoy before."

Harry stood and wandered restlessly around the office for a moment. Kingsley tended to take his own photos out of the _Daily Prophet _and hang them on the walls of his office with some self-deprecating caption. Harry halted next to one of Kingsley at a press conference that he'd put in a huge frame, and traced one finger over the writing beneath it. _See, the Conquering Spokesman Cometh!_ "I just thought he'd reformed since the war."

_ Or since his marriage, _Harry added in the privacy of his own head. Malfoy had married Astoria Greengrass not long out of school, and had a son. They'd got divorced, but not even the _Prophet _had been able to discover any sort of scandal there, and that meant there was none. Malfoy had stayed out of trouble since, too.

"He's been seen frequenting Knockturn Alley, and some of the artifacts he's bought have disappeared," said Kingsley. "Completely. They don't even register on our wards that still guard the Manor."

Harry turned around, startled. "So you think—"

"That he's guarding them in some room that doesn't show up on the wards, or selling them." Kingsley sighed and rubbed his arms. "Yes." He looked Harry straight in the eye. "It's not that I particularly want to blame Malfoy or see him arrested. It's that he's not supposed to have any place in his home like that, or conduct business like that, and you know it."

Harry nodded. "That's true." He hesitated once. "Are you sure that my form still isn't too notorious from the Fluell case to send it out again so soon?"

"For once, your targets' secrecy worked for us." Kingsley waved a hand. "Fluell didn't tell anyone about what he was buying, and he didn't identify you. And his testimony is sealed to the Wizengamot."

Harry relaxed slightly. The Fluell case had involved a man who was raising Inferi, and the resulting battle to capture Fluell and make sure all the risen dead were destroyed had involved Harry springing into and out of Animagus form in the relative publicity of a wizarding neighborhood. Certainly someone peering out of the window might have seen something they could have reported.

"Then I'll look at it," said Harry. "Does Malfoy have any reason to buy me?" Sometimes he simply sneaked into his targets' homes; sometimes he posed as a pet brought by a visitor who was actually an accomplice; sometimes he managed to persuade someone to buy him in his Animagus form. Harry preferred that last option, since it let him move the most freely around the house.

"Yes, he does," said Kingsley. "There are reports that he's been in and out of numerous shops in Diagon Alley, looking for the perfect present for his son, and not finding it."

"Then I suppose it's to the Magical Menagerie for me," Harry muttered. Under new management since the war, the Magical Menagerie was friendly to the Ministry and had sold Harry a few times before.

"Yes," said Kingsley, with a judicious nod. "It was five years ago that you were sold there the last time. That ought to be enough."

Harry smiled. "It will. I don't think even Malfoy's paranoid enough anymore to check on statistics like that."

Kingsley gave him an odd look. "You seem to be placing a lot of trust in someone that you _don't _have any reason to trust, Harry," he said softly.

Harry shrugged noncommittally. He really did think that Malfoy had turned his life around. But he could see why people who hadn't been in the middle of the Fiendfyre with Malfoy, and seen his face when he stared at Harry while Harry returned his wand to him, would disagree.

"When do I leave?"

* * *

><p>"What is <em>this<em>?"

Harry blinked and raised his head, yawning lazily. He had a fairly cramped cage, but then, the Magical Menagerie itself was a narrow little shop. He stood up, his tail swaying slowly back and forth, and sauntered forwards to stare out through the bars at Malfoy.

"A royal pard, sir," said the assistant witch who was tossing mice into one of the rainbow snake cages. Harry was going to be glad to be away from the snakes. They were vain little things, constantly comparing their scales with each other's and trying to bite when one of them insulted the other—which was all the time.

"A _what_?" Malfoy knelt down in front of the cage, which was only slightly raised from the floor. "I've never seen one."

_No, you haven't, _Harry thought smugly. His Animagus form was a grey, spotted cat about the size of an ocelot, but with a longer tail, touches of white on his belly and face, and brilliant green eyes that at least made sense for a feline. Sometimes Harry understood the stories about his eyes being unnatural when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He liked looking like his Mum, he really did, but it was such a weird color.

"Where did it come from?" Malfoy whispered, as if he was questioning Harry more than the assistant witch. He reached out a hand, fearlessly, and stuck it through the bars so that he could scratch Harry's chin.

Harry flattened his ears and began purring almost without meaning to. Malfoy must have had cats and Kneazles, because he knew exactly where to stroke. Harry hoped he hadn't been chopping them up for Potions ingredients.

"They come from an island that was thought to be utterly devastated of life because of the tests that Muggles performed on it," said the assistant witch, and smiled at Harry as she dusted little bits of fur and flesh off her hands. Harry slit one eye at her, and then closed it again so he could enjoy the way Malfoy rubbed hard at his cheek, just beneath his whiskers. "They can use their magic to make themselves blend into walls and rocks and beaches—everything I can think of. We suppose that's the way they managed to survive when so many other things died. And they're highly resistant to magic and poison."

Harry curled his tongue in a lazy yawn, the only sign of his amusement he cared to express. That description of his skills was all true, bar the part about the island, but they had figured it out from tests only after Harry had successfully made the Animagus transformation for the first time. They didn't really know what he was. He had transformed into a unique animal, as per usual.

"Why royal?" Malfoy's hand had moved onto his shoulders, and Harry turned a circle and led Malfoy's hand along his spine where he wanted it. "There doesn't seem to be any kind of a crown-like marking on him." His fingers this time found a spot Harry hadn't even known was itchy, and he arched and purred so loudly that Malfoy chuckled a little.

"I know, but I didn't name them," said the assistant witch. "He's expensive, though." The price that people paid for Harry was part of the reason that his relationship with the Magical Menagerie stayed strong.

"I might be willing to pay the price," said Malfoy, and smiled when Harry turned around again and sneezed at him. "Does he get along well with children? Is he intelligent?"

"He loves children," the assistant witch said with a little bob of her head, which fortunately for Harry was true. "Supposedly his kind instinctually protects them."

"Supposedly?" Malfoy cocked his head back and raised his eyebrows.

"I told you they were rare." The assistant witch managed to sound a little indignant. "I'm just telling you what I've heard, based on other ones that we've had in the shop and that people have told me about."

"Hmm." Malfoy glanced back at Harry again. "It's true that I could hide him in the Manor for a day or so until Scorpius is ready for Christmas…"

Harry gave an enthusiastic chirping sound and butted his head against Malfoy's, turning his head to the side so that his cheek glided along Malfoy's. Malfoy made a surprised noise, and whispered, "You have eyes _his _shade."

Harry would have frozen, but that was harder to do when he was a pard. Good thing, too. He stood up on his hind legs and made a playful swat at Malfoy through the bars, claws retracted.

"Can they understand English?" Malfoy was still staring at Harry, and his hand had fallen down on the side of his neck where Harry didn't have any itches. Harry batted at him again, and Malfoy resumed his petting, rising to his feet so that he could reach up as high as he needed to.

"They respond well to tone." The assistant witch gave a little shrug. "And he likes you more than any of the other people who've come into the shop and tried to pet him so far. That's supposedly part of what keeps them rare pets. They just run away from people they don't like and they don't consider worthy of owning them."

"That would be enough reason for the name royal, I assume," Malfoy whispered, and bent down so that he was talking to Harry, almost into his ear, which Harry flicked and twitched before he could keep it still. "How would you like to come home with me?"

Harry gave another purring chirp, and laid his head on Malfoy's shoulder as well as he could through the bars.

"I only hope he's half this fond of my son." Malfoy stood back with a little smile of amazement that Harry basked in. His acting skills in this form really had improved. "He is for Scorpius, after all."

"There'll be no problem with that, sir, given everything I've heard about how they interact with children." The assistant smiled benignly at the two of them. "So that's going to be a sale?"

* * *

><p>"I wasn't wrong. You do have eyes like Harry Potter's."<p>

Harry tilted his head back. He sat in the middle of a large, unfurnished room at Malfoy Manor that Malfoy seemed to intend to keep him in until he could officially gift Harry to Scorpius. It did have a large food dish stuffed with shredded raw meat, several water dishes, a padded apparatus full of holes and scratchy material that Harry could climb on, endless balls and small puzzles on the floor, and a box where Harry could conduct the only business that put him off about being a cat.

_He did mean me, _Harry thought, a little startled. _But why would he care about that?_

"I think Scorpius is going to love you." Malfoy crouched down in front of him again, and Harry stood up and trotted over to him, rubbing against his knee. Malfoy chuckled and stroked his face, grinding his knuckles into a corner of Harry's jaw in a way that was unexpectedly blissful. Harry purred again and fell down in a boneless heap on the floor, arching his back.

He hoped that Malfoy wasn't guilty. Harry didn't particularly want to arrest someone who was such a good scratcher.

"You'll have to stay here, though," Malfoy murmured, sounding regretful. "One day. Perhaps I can make some time to pet you when I come to feed you."

He stroked Harry once more, this time from his head to the base of his tail, and then stood and walked to the door. Harry stretched his forepaws out playfully, but Malfoy shook his head. "Business calls," he said, in what at least did sound like a genuinely regretful voice, and shut the door.

Harry wouldn't try to sneak out yet, and he certainly wouldn't try to transform. The Manor probably had wards that detected an unwanted human presence, though at least it didn't have any of the kind that would keep out Animagi completely, or Harry would have been found out when he tried to enter. He curled up now, enjoying the flexibility of being able to wrap his head halfway around his legs if he wanted.

Pards—or whatever he truly was—were better at night, anyway, and not just because their eyes were good in the dark. Harry knew there was a silent, subtle grace about him that let him blend into long shadows, and humans stumbled around more often and were prone to miss things when the sun had fallen below the world.

Harry fell asleep, purring.

* * *

><p>He woke when the space beneath the door let in both darkness and something that he could only categorize as a sort of smell of the night—the combination of silence and dimness and coolness that meant the light was gone. Harry yawned, rolling his tongue back, and then went over to his food bowl and ate nearly all of the meat. He didn't think Malfoy had come back to visit. The scent was cold.<p>

That left the door. Harry hadn't heard a lock click shut, but there could be a spell securing it shut. In fact, it was likely unless this was a part of the Manor that Scorpius didn't visit very often.

Harry braced himself on the wall on his hind legs and wrapped his paws around the doorknob. It wobbled back and forth for a second, and then a bright blue glow lit around it. Harry leaned his head on the metal of the knob and began to purr again.

The assistant witch in the Magical Menagerie hadn't been lying when she told Malfoy that Harry was highly resistant to magic. What she hadn't mentioned, of course, was that Harry could break some magic just by being in contact with it. It didn't work with wards or very powerful spells, but something like a simple locking charm didn't last long, especially when he purred in special "encouraging" patterns.

Sure enough, the spell broke with a pop like a bubble a few seconds later. Harry turned the knob again, and the door clicked open. Harry slipped out as soon as the crack was wide enough, and slipped a paw beneath the door to pull it shut from the outside.

Now he was in the middle of a wide corridor he didn't know at all; during his first, brief visit to Malfoy Manor, he was sure that he hadn't been near this place. It ran out of sight in both directions, only rarely marked with doors or windows.

This was the part Harry liked best: in the dark, in the middle of a new adventure.

Still purring, he set out to explore.

He opened a few other doors on that corridor, but all of them seemed to be simple storage rooms; when they did have furniture, it was of the sort covered with cloth and carefully protected against dust. Harry backed away from the last one and decided that he wouldn't find anything promising here. It could be a mistake, of course, to skip past them, but it was the sort of risk one had to take. He had only a limited amount of time to explore the Manor.

A few steps around a corner, and he came to the top of a wide staircase. It was spiral, but not the narrow iron steps that Harry had seen at a few places in the Muggle world. The treads looked as if he could lie on them comfortably. Harry frisked his tail back and forth, and began to glide down them.

The staircase spilled out in a wide room lined with portraits whose occupants were all sleeping—not snoring. They'd probably used special potions when they were alive not to snore, Harry thought, gliding invisibly along in the shadows. He had already adjusted his coat pattern to blend in with the strong moonlight coming through the windows. It wouldn't do for a Malfoy to snore.

He was faced with a choice of corridors this time, going off in five directions. Harry solved the problem by going to the mouth of each one and breathing deeply.

One sniff was enough to tell him which one led to the house-elves' part of the house, including the kitchens, and he immediately discarded the notion of going that way. Another corridor smelled of water, and Harry hesitated, but he remembered Malfoy saying something about an indoor pool where Scorpius liked to spend his time, and his amused comments on how Harry would want to keep out of it. Too good a chance that only the pool was in that direction.

Two other corridors were free of dust, but had no recent human smell on them. The fifth corridor bristled with the scents of humans, sharp-smelling plants that made Harry sneeze, and dead animals, tempting to Harry's nose in his pard form. This would be the place where Malfoy had his Potions lab, and perhaps storage for the Dark artifacts that he had supposedly acquired. And it was mired in his thick, warm scent.

Harry sniffed around some more for wards, but didn't sense any. Well, with the outside of his house wrapped in the protective enchantments Harry had sensed when he was brought in, Malfoy probably didn't need any in an inner sanctum.

Harry moved slowly down the corridor nevertheless, letting his color change to match every new patch of wall and shadow. It wasn't beyond question that Malfoy could be working late, and Harry wanted to make sure he didn't take chances.

The door of the Potions lab stood slightly ajar, making Harry glad of his caution, at least until he noticed there was no light underneath it. He sniffed, lips a little parted, nose working, and still smelled no human scent. It seemed that Malfoy might also leave his lab open when he wasn't here, along with leaving the path to it unprotected.

Harry was about to enter it when a different door caught his attention. This one was firmly closed, but it had no locking charm or wards on it either, from what Harry could tell. And the smells coming out of it were dusty paper instead of the sharp Potions ingredients that Harry was almost allergic to.

Harry cocked his head. He might find clues as to Malfoy's research in a room full of paper, and he had to admit that he wasn't looking forward to investigating a lab that made him sneeze unless he had to.

Hermione would say he was lazy. Harry, as he trotted over and stood on his hind legs to manipulate the knob again, preferred to think of it as practicality. He would go in where he wasn't invited, certainly, but not where he didn't actually need to be.

The door clicked open, and Harry found himself in the middle of what didn't look like a library. Or not a traditional one. There were flat wooden boxes on the shelves instead of books. Harry wandered in, and leaped up on a table to study the scissors and papers laid flat there. It looked like the _Daily Prophet._

It was hard to make his eyes focus on letters in this form, with depths and colors and shadows all being different, but he had no trouble recognizing the photograph on the front page. That was _him_, standing with his arms folded and an impatient smile on his face at the last ceremony to celebrate the ending of the war.

Harry stared. The end of his tail twitched back and forth, and he resisted the impulse to put out a claw and rend the paper to shreds.

Was Malfoy trying to work some Dark magic on him through slicing up his photographs? Harry heard persistent rumors of magic like that, the way any Auror did, but he had never uncovered substantial proof of it. Photographs were reflections of their original, but seemed to have no permanent connection to them.

Perhaps Malfoy just meant to cut the head off the photograph or something, Harry theorized slowly. Malfoy had seemed fascinated with how Harry's pard eyes echoed the "real" Harry Potter's. Maybe he blamed Harry for the emigration of his parents and the loss of some of their money since the war.

Harry chuffed and bowed his head. If that was the case, he despised the truth he'd spent so much time trying to uncover. He really _did _want to think that Malfoy had changed and grown since the war.

Then he shook his head and leaped easily from the table to one of the least cluttered shelves. If Malfoy was trying to work Dark magic on him through his photograph, then he should find some esoteric theory in those boxes. Though they did look rather small to store grimoires of the notorious kind…

Harry found out why when he pawed one box's lid delicately off. Inside was a stack of photographs clipped from papers, mostly, although some had the denser paper that might have marked them as taken from books.

And all of them were of him.

Harry sat down with a thump he would have been worried about if he was any heavier or this room any closer to where Malfoy slept, and pawed the shelf in irritation. What was Malfoy _doing_? Why did he keep all this? What in the world could it _matter _to him? Even Ron, who had collected all the photographs of himself that the papers would publish with a sort of childish fascination, had given up on the project in disgust at last.

Harry could understand the impulse—if you had fame and didn't hate it like he did. He didn't know what would keep Malfoy collecting pictures of someone _else_, though.

There was a bigger box on a shelf across from him. Harry pawed the lid of the one in front of him back on, using his claws to catch the edge when it wouldn't cooperate at first, and then sprang over to that shelf. He had to arch his back to fit under the shelf above, and use his teeth on this particular lid, which flipped back on sticky hinges.

This one didn't contain photographs. It contained something that Harry didn't recognize, partially because the colors were muted through time and the darkness and being a cat, and he had to sniff it and turn it over before he did. Wool, dense fabric, with a tingle of magic. And the emblem on the front was Gryffindor's.

One of his old school scarves. If Harry had more light than leaked in dimly through an enchanted window, he'd probably see the red and gold.

Harry sank down on his haunches, staring. This made even _less _sense. Again, he could see Malfoy saving Slytherin scarves. Not Gryffindor ones.

But he had learned, since the war, to do better than to sit there resisting obvious conclusions, and there was a very obvious one waiting here for him.

_You know that he's saving them because they're connected to you._

Harry scraped a paw harshly down the shelf again, and then flipped the lid back to. Then he began jumping from shelf to shelf, checking only briefly to make sure they would hold his body weight. It seemed they all would. Malfoy had built for the future, Harry thought, wanting to make sure that his library would hold a lot more books than it had to hold right now.

In half an hour, Harry found some of his Gryffindor ties, several notes that he had written in class—he wondered how in the world Malfoy had got those—a few books from the Hogwarts library that Harry had written notes in, and dozens and dozens of clippings from newspapers. Malfoy had even clipped one that had Harry's name and not his photograph in it, discussing his attendance as one of a long list of guests at a Ministry gala, but he'd at least circled Harry's name in that one and written "Keep?" at the top in doubtful letters.

Harry didn't find any evidence of research into the Dark Arts, at all.

Neither did he find any evidence of a dangerous obsession. It seemed even Malfoy realized that he might look mental if anyone found this. The door hadn't been locked, but it _had _been hidden. And when Harry glanced over his shoulder at the sound of a thump, wanting to make sure no one was approaching, he saw what he had missed before. There were wards around the top of the door on the inside. They were shimmering, green-gold lines that were only meant to detect human intrusion. Presumably Malfoy didn't want to be jerked out of a sound sleep by the wards reporting a spider in the room.

No, wait, there was one different ward down at the bottom of the door. Holding his breath, Harry studied it until he recognized it.

A ward against beetles. He would have smiled if he could have.

But he had spent a lot of time here, and it was getting closer to dawn than he'd like. He would probably be able to roam a little more without fear, but his spy training had taught him to court only reasonably good chances. Only when the situation exploded, the way it had on the Fluell case, was he to put himself in any danger. Otherwise, he would retreat when he felt like he should and take the risk later.

It might be a little harder to escape tomorrow night than tonight, Harry admitted to himself. He would meet Scorpius today, and the little boy would probably want to play with Harry all night and have Harry sleep in his bed.

On the other hand, there were advantages to that, Harry thought, as he made sure he'd left no hair or scratch marks behind, and then slipped his paw beneath the door to shut it. Such as what might be found in the family wing.

He didn't want to think of what he'd found in the library, which was another reason he retreated to the room Malfoy had given him. He would sleep, and forget about it. A weakness, but he would indulge the weakness now, and think about it later, with a clearer head.

* * *

><p>Unfortunately, Harry hadn't had time to clear his head before the door opened the next morning and footsteps came rushing in. Harry stretched himself, forelegs and back, and yawned. He knew that the only reason he had got even that far with the stretching was that his audience was standing in front of him, speechless with admiration.<p>

"Daddy!" Scorpius's voice was a bit high-pitched for the accuracy of Harry's hearing, and he flattened his ears. "What did you _buy _me?" Scorpius swung around and hugged Malfoy.

"Be gentle, Scorpius," said Malfoy. Harry looked up to find that he had one hand on his son's back, and one amused eye on Harry. "He's sensitive to the louder noises you can make, I think. And he's a pet that will require a lot of careful and gentle handling. Those claws could hurt you if you don't watch out."

Harry sat back and purred in response when Scorpius gave him a considering look. He wasn't scared yet, Harry thought, but he looked as if he was deciding whether he ought to be scared.

"You got me a pet that I need to guard myself from?" The question was important in a private way, Harry thought. Scorpius had once again turned back to study his father.

Malfoy gave his son a deep look that made Harry's tail lash in spite of himself. He knew Lucius Malfoy had loved his son, and so it was perfectly possible for someone to be both a loving parent and deeply involved in the Dark Arts.

But this was more than love. This was courage, and the deliberate testing of someone else's courage, Harry thought. And responsibility. He hadn't thought much about Malfoy's motives in buying such a dangerous pet for his son; he had thought Malfoy's need for a gift and his fascination with Harry's eyes and his rarity was enough. But this was something more.

This was love that made Harry despair, because he didn't understand how a man who could love someone like this could also obsess over Harry's image with all the force Harry had seen in that room.

"I understand, Daddy," Scorpius said at last, and his voice was respectful. "What's his name?"

"I thought I would leave it up to you to name him," said Malfoy.

Scorpius turned and looked at Harry. Harry obligingly arched his back and let Scorpius see the touch of white on his belly, hoping that might help.

"Foam," said Scorpius a second later, and smiled. "Because the white on his belly and face looks like foam on a rock."

Harry blinked and settled back on his haunches. He had thought Scorpius would settle on Shadow or something similar. But hey, this might be a good thing. It would show that he was more original than Harry had thought a little kid could be.

And it meant that Harry could go up and nuzzle Scorpius's hand when he called, "Come on, Foam!" and Scorpius looked as pleased as though he had managed to cast a Levitating Charm all by himself.

"Come on," Scorpius told Harry again, and began to run through the corridor. "I want to take you out into the gardens and show you to the house-elves. You're _not _to eat them, understand?" Harry gave an obliging purr. "You're to let them alone. And you need to not kill the peacocks, either. I'd better introduce you to them. And then we can see if you can balance on a broom…"

When they reached the corner, Harry did look back at Malfoy, unlikely though he thought it was that Malfoy would disappear into doing Dark Arts the moment his son was occupied. Indeed, Malfoy stood in place, smiling after them with an oddly wistful expression.

Scorpius stopped abruptly, and Harry nearly smacked his nose into his legs. He turned around and waved at Malfoy. "You come too, Daddy."

Something in Malfoy's face softened and transformed the way it had when Scorpius was speaking to him about responsibility. He nodded, and followed them out. Now and then his dangling hand brushed against Harry's fur, and Harry doubted it was a coincidence.

_Is pity the right response when someone is that obsessed with another person? Or does he just like me for being a cat, and it doesn't matter whether I have "Harry Potter" eyes or not?_

* * *

><p>It was amazing how easily days settled into a routine, after that. Harry played with Scorpius during the day, and napped when he napped, and sat with Malfoy while he wrote out paperwork for his business—which seemed a matter of brewing potions, finding ingredients, and selling peacock feathers—and leaped into the air and caught birds in his mouth without harming them, to Scorpius's delight, and even rode on brooms. It was hard not to drop to his belly and clutch the broom with all four legs, but he managed to balance upright on the shaft when Scorpius was only a short distance from the ground. When it started to wobble and Scorpius showed signs of wanting to go higher, Harry simply leaped to safety.<p>

Scorpius was disappointed about that, but it made Malfoy laugh. "Foam's a smart cat," he said, and his hand descended to fondle Harry's cheeks and even brush his whiskers. Harry didn't usually like people doing that—it interfered too much with the soft, subtle vibrations of the air that the whiskers brought him—but he tolerated it from Malfoy.

It was easy to tolerate things, with Malfoy.

Harry didn't forget his mission, though, and he had early on established that he preferred to curl up by Scorpius's feet instead of sleep under the covers with him, so slipping away wasn't as much of a problem as he had feared it might be. He prowled the Manor by night, looking into new rooms, even venturing into the kitchen once the house-elves had lost their fear of him and would give him snacks, and down the deserted corridors.

Nothing. Harry had investigated the Potions lab during the day, strolling boldly in as Malfoy brewed, and there was nothing there that seemed suspicious, either. Malfoy had no reason to hide secrets or ingredients from someone he thought couldn't read, and Harry stared and sniffed himself dizzy, trying to pick up a mislabeled vial or something similar and suspicious.

Nothing.

But the fact remained that Malfoy had bought Dark artifacts—probably as part of his business—and they had come into his house and disappeared _somehow_. Harry no longer believed that he was using them, but he could have sold them on. And the Auror Department's concern about a hidden room was only intensifying. One of the "birds" Harry had caught was a sparrow Patronus from another Auror, warning him that they couldn't afford to keep Harry in his pard guise with the Malfoys much longer.

_But they also can't arrest him if they don't find anything, _Harry thought, his tail snapping in exasperated figure-eight patterns.

On the day he received that message, Harry slipped away from Scorpius's room and went into Malfoy's library, where he sat late reading a heavy tome by the fire. Even a glance at the cover made Harry sneeze in disgust. That wasn't a Dark Arts book, that was a history of the wizarding world from the time of the Founders. Harry curled up on the rug at Malfoy's feet and tilted his head towards the warmth.

"Hello, Foam." Malfoy's voice was soft and comfortable. He reached out and rubbed one hand down Harry's back. Harry's purr bubbled out of his throat almost without his realizing it, and he rolled on his back, letting Malfoy touch his belly until the sensitivity became too much. Then he swatted away his hand with sheathed claws.

He looked up to find Malfoy smiling at him, so serene that Harry would never have thought this was _Draco Malfoy _if he was seeing his face from a distance without that distinctive hair. "So like him," Malfoy whispered. "The eyes, and the temperament. Or what I would think Harry Potter was like as a cat, anyway."

Harry curled up his hind legs and kicked at air. Holding still could so easily be seen as suspicious.

But it didn't seem as though Malfoy really suspected him. He shook his head and went back to caressing the long, dark stripe that ran down the middle of Harry's spine. "I'm glad you're part of the family, Foam," he whispered.

Harry spent the next two hours batting at toys Malfoy held for him, and curling up on his feet, and trying to sit beside him in the chair, and basically burning with guilt.

* * *

><p>Late that evening, his eyes opened and his body flowed into a sitting position almost without his command.<p>

There was something going on. Something that had disturbed the coolness of the evening, something that had disturbed the silence of the house that should be lingering everywhere except inside the house-elves' wing.

Harry slinked quietly out of the library. The fire was long-dead, and Malfoy had gone to his room. Harry slipped from pool to pool of moonlight along the corridor; it was easier to adjust his grey and white coloring to the light than to absolute darkness.

When he reached the ground floor and the wide front doors, he heard it. Something was taking apart the wards, at a distance. Harry thought he had only sensed it because of the extraordinary magic sensitivity that this form had.

Harry stood a moment with his tail swaying. Had Malfoy pissed someone off with his purchases in Knockturn Alley? Someone who actually owned one of the artifacts he had bought, perhaps? It would make sense. And it would fit the furtive dismantling of the wards, rather than the all-out frontal charge Harry thought would happen if one of Malfoy's former Gryffindor enemies had come to call.

But he couldn't tell without actually seeing out. He leaped quietly onto the sill of a window and leaned for a moment against the glass, butting his head on a delicate rosette etched into the glass itself. He had seen Malfoy press it when he wanted to change the view of the enchanted window.

It switched, flickering like a giant Muggle light, from the vision of a path that Harry usually saw it showing to the gardens, to a forest, to a vegetable patch outside the kitchen, and finally to the wrought-iron gates of the Manor. Harry leaned forwards.

There was a group of at least five or six wizards standing at the gates. The moonlight and the distance and the pard form kept him from seeing colors, but he knew their stances and the spells they were using on the wards. _Aurors._

Harry hissed without sound. It had been other Aurors who had intervened on the Fluell case, too, stampeding inside and warning Fluell before Harry had completely secured the evidence. It was one reason why what should have been a simple arrest had turned into a running battle.

This time, the way they were approaching said they had either learned something from the public relations disaster of that case, or they really thought they could come in and out and learn the location of Malfoy's secret room for themselves. They weren't trusting him. They hadn't told him. And Harry knew that a Patronus at least would have found him, as it had the other day. It was a day past New Year's, and they hadn't given him a deadline.

In short, Harry was bloody furious, which made his next decision easier than it should have been. He arched his back, lifted his head, and threw all his anger into his yowl.

The sound was answered by shrill shrieks from the kitchens, and then a house-elf appeared right next to him and stared at him with big eyes. Harry jerked his head at the gates, and the elf shrieked again and vanished. A second later, Harry could make out a scuffling commotion from the family wing.

He didn't wait. He leaped down from the windowsill and ran to the front doors. They weren't locked, which was good, because otherwise Harry would have been tempted to change back to his human form and hit them with all the force of his wandless magic. Or maybe his desperate magic had already fried the locking charms.

He yanked or kicked them open, he was never sure which afterwards, and he sprinted down the pathway towards the gates, yowling all the time. The Aurors cutting through the wards stopped and stared at him in utter astonishment. Harry could hear them murmuring to themselves, and then someone held up his wand and called a _Lumos _Charm.

Harry screeched to a halt and glared at them. He made sure to hold up his head so that they could see his green eyes catching the light.

"What's that?" someone behind the wizard with the lighted wand whispered.

"A royal pard," said a witch who must be in on the deception. For a second, she stared at Harry, and then looked around as though someone was going to appear and tell her what to do.

"A royal pain in the arse," muttered someone else. "It's probably alerted the Malfoys." He moved forwards, and Harry made out the flat brown haircut and squinting eyes of Auror James Morgan, who had made the Fluell case go so badly. "Shoo! Get out of here!"

Harry wanted to slap his own forehead with a paw. He couldn't _believe _there were Aurors here who hadn't recognized his Animagus form. He hissed in response, and braced himself. He would attack, although he would try not to cause pain, if they actually crossed the line onto Malfoy property.

"What are you doing here?"

Malfoy's voice was soft and controlled, without any trace of sleep. Harry wondered if he had been lying awake, and hooped he hadn't been brooding on his impossible fascination with Harry.

_Well, all right, brooding on his impossible fascination with me is better than brooding on new ways to acquire Dark artifacts._

"Have I violated the laws governing Dark wizards in some way I'm not aware of?" Malfoy put his hand on Harry's back, and Harry sat down underneath his touch. The temptation to purr would be less that way. "And why would so many Aurors need to respond to a violation?" Malfoy added, his voice changing tone.

For a moment, Harry's colleagues stood there, with the most embarrassed looks on their faces that Harry had ever seen. Then someone muttered, and someone else whispered, and the wizard with the lighted wand lowered it and bowed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy. But we _have _received reports that you were buying Dark artifacts and bringing them home, and then the wards couldn't detect them. We tried to s—that is, we tried to make sure that it wasn't happening, but there seems to be no new evidence. So we thought we could come into your house and investigate, quietly, to see if there was a hidden room."

Harry's tail twitched. He had thought it possible that the Aurors who knew him would betray his identity and the work he had done so far, but it seemed that he still had the option to choose how to reveal himself to Malfoy.

Malfoy sighed and shook his head. "You couldn't have _asked _me? I've been buying those artifacts, bringing them home, and destroying them. I use the components for Potions, mostly, and the ones I can't use are placed in warded rooms with Accelerated Decay Charms that destroy or corrode them."

Harry gave a little chirrup despite himself. _That _told him why he hadn't sensed any Dark magic! The Accelerated Decay Charms would have released no scent but the dusty and abandoned ones that he had smelled down those two other corridors on his first night.

Malfoy looked down at Harry with a rueful curl of his lips. "It seems that my pard—my son's pard—approves of what I'm doing," he said, and his eyes returned to the Aurors. "You could have asked me," he repeated. Now his voice had a different tone.

There was some shuffling. Then Morgan asked, "And could we have counted on you to tell the truth? Of course not! We don't know if he's telling the truth now!" He looked around at the other Aurors and raised a hand. "We're here, and we have the authorization from the Ministry! I say we go inside and see what we can find."

"No, Morgan," said the witch who had identified Harry as a royal pard, with another glance at him. "The Ministry will eventually find out if he's telling the truth or not. For now, we have to retire gracefully."

Harry sneezed. He knew what that meant. The raid would have the Ministry's blessing as long as it was discreet and succeeded. The minute an Auror got found out—especially a spy like Harry—they were on their own. The Ministry would avenge their murder, ransom them, or negotiate their release, but they wouldn't back up someone who had embarrassed them.

"That's right," said Malfoy, and his hand tightened for a second on Harry's back. "And next time, you can _ask _instead of trying to destroy my wards." His voice was a snarl worthy of Harry on the last words.

More muttering, and Aurors began to drift away. Harry yawned after them, and if they wanted to take that as his sticking his tongue out at them, they could.

Harry let his spine relax a second later, and Malfoy turned and looked at him in wonder.

"Who are you?" he whispered.

Harry opened his mouth to offer another reassuring purr, and then paused and tilted his head. Malfoy had asked _who _he was, not _what _he was.

His tongue curled back into his mouth, and his legs would have trembled if he wasn't sitting so solidly on the ground. He curled his tail around his front paws and blinked at Malfoy in silence for a second, not sure what he could say.

"I suspected it before," Malfoy continued gravely. "No animal is that intelligent. And no animal has that much magic. And then I began to study on my own, and while I wasn't able to confirm much, I was able to confirm that there's no such creature as a royal pard in the wizarding records I have access to. Which means it doesn't exist." He crouched down in front of Harry and raised his hands. "Not that I'm not grateful for your help. But why are you here? I can't believe that the desire of most Animagi is to spend all their time as a pet."

_Unless you're on the run from the law, _Harry thought, remembering Scabbers.

But he had a choice, now. He could pretend that he didn't know what Malfoy meant, or that he was only an animal, and maybe the problem would solve itself. But he didn't really think so, and he didn't want to chance Malfoy finding out later and being upset. He would probably be upset anyway, but—well. Harry had investigated the Manor so much that he thought he knew certain corners of it better than the house-elves. He didn't believe there was any secret room where Malfoy hid Dark artifacts and cackled and got ready to take over the world.

Harry took a slow step back. Malfoy stood up and touched his wand for a second, as though he thought Harry would either run or spring at his throat.

Harry knew this was going to be embarrassing, transforming back without any clothes on. But he thought Malfoy would probably look away once he realized what was happening.

He closed his eyes and slowly reversed the transformation. There was the usual sensation of being forced through a reverse tunnel that that usually engendered, and then he was crouching on the ground, cold and aware of how much his knees hurt.

He looked up and found Malfoy gaping at him, his lips parted.

"A cloak or something?" Harry's voice was as gritty as the gravel under his knees. Well, he hadn't spoken aloud for more than a week, and exercising his voice as a pard wasn't really the same thing.

Malfoy called for a cloak without removing his eyes from Harry. Harry grumbled and blushed, and forced himself to his feet. He had thought Malfoy would look away the moment he realized Harry was naked, or throw him out. He hadn't expected the thoughtful gaze Malfoy ran up and down him, or the way he paused at Harry's groin.

A house-elf appeared with a cloak—Harry thought it was the same elf he had sent to alert Malfoy to the attacking Aurors—and Harry wrapped it around himself. He sighed and said, "I'm an Animagus, yes. I go into the homes of people who are suspected of purchasing Dark artifacts or smuggling magical creatures or doing—any of a number of things, really. I'm going to ask that you not tell anyone else about this."

"The way you asked me if you could spy on me?" Malfoy's voice had a quick lash of anger, now, and Harry could see the pink flush in his cheeks in the way that he wouldn't have been able to as a pard. "And what exactly am I going to tell Scorpius about where his pet went?"

Harry looked off to the side. "I didn't ask you then. Maybe I should have. I wanted to believe that you'd changed since the war, but Kingsley was so insistent about the way those Dark artifacts kept disappearing behind your wards and then going away. He thought there was some kind of warded room—"

"_What _am I going to tell Scorpius?"

Harry turned around. "I don't know," he said steadily. "Unless you think that he's old enough to be trusted to hold his tongue over the truth. I don't know him well enough to say that." He'd spent time with Scorpius, entertaining him, true, but more of his attention had gone to Malfoy.

"I don't think he is," said Malfoy. "For that matter, _I _haven't decided to hold my tongue on the truth."

"I am registered," Harry said steadily. "It's legal."

"It doesn't have to be illegal to be _despicable_."

Harry ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "Yeah, I know. Sorry. It just—I wanted to believe that you'd changed. I really thought you had. That's why I made the decision to alert you to the Aurors instead of letting them follow me to some places I was suspicious of at first."

Malfoy said nothing. Thinking that was unusual, Harry glanced back at him and found that he had gone pale. "You've looked into _all _my secrets?" he whispered.

"Yes," said Harry, and hoped that his eyes and voice weren't judgmental.

Malfoy turned rigidly away from him, looking out over the grounds. He seemed to struggle to speak for a moment, and when he did, his voice was weak. "Then I suppose you know I'm not evil. I'm just pathetic, for the amount of time I spend obsessing over someone who will never care for me back."

Harry tried to be careful with his words. "I thought it was creepy at first. I thought you blamed me for any problems that you had since the war, and maybe that was connected to why you were buying Dark artifacts. I mean, if you were."

Malfoy turned his head back towards Harry. He was listening and not dismissing him, and Harry reckoned that was all the second chance he could ask for, right now.

He licked his lips and continued. "You kept talking about my eyes, though. That was how I put it together. I don't—I don't know what I did to be so important to you."

Malfoy shut his eyes, a slow blink. "You were yourself. That was all you ever had to do."

Harry took a step forwards. He was reaching a hand out without knowing how it had happened. He only knew that he needed Malfoy to turn around and take that hand.

It took forever. Malfoy still seemed to be staring off into the distance and awaiting laughter that never came. But, finally, he did turn around, as slow as dreams, and looked at Harry again, his head and his hand and his eyes.

"I still don't know what I'm going to tell Scorpius," he whispered.

"I know." Harry's voice didn't waver.

"I'm still angry about what you did."

"I know." Harry's gaze didn't waver.

"The only reason I'm not even angrier is that I figured out two days ago on my own that you must be an Animagus."

"I know." Harry's hand didn't waver.

Malfoy moved forwards with slow steps, as though the gravel that lay in between them was a distance of many miles. His hand clasped Harry's, and it felt warmer to Harry than either the cloak that wrapped them or his own fur.

"I think I might ask you to stay a pard for a few more days, until I figure out how to explain to Scorpius that Foam can't stay with us anymore," Malfoy said.

Harry started to slip out of the cloak, but Malfoy shook his head. "No. Not right now. I want to spend an—evening—with you first."

He leaned forwards.

Harry knew that it was up to him how to interpret the gesture, so he did. He leaned in and kissed Malfoy, kissed Draco, on the lips.

It wasn't the world's most thrilling kiss, but it was warm and reminded Harry of that evening they had already shared by the fire. Draco made a soft, contented noise in his throat, and wrapped his arms around Harry, hands stroking his spine.

"Foam doesn't have to leave forever," Harry said, pulling back. "We'll tell Scorpius the truth, but I can be here to play with him and get to know him better. In whatever form I want to be."

"He might like that," Draco said, and his voice was softer than the snow that had begun to tumble around them, softer than his lips. "But tonight is mine."

And he and Harry walked back up towards the house, the padding of their feet hardly louder, Harry thought, than the sound of his own paws. But the four feet now belonged to two people instead of one.

Harry liked that.

**The End.**


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